Pudatso of Shangri-La: a national park to explore the "other shore" of happiness

The Tibetan translation of "Pudatso", "Bita Hai", means that Pudu sentient beings have reached the other shore of happiness and entered the paradise.

The pudatso national park system pilot area is the first "test field" for Chinese mainland to learn from foreign experience and take the lead in carrying out national park research. Over the years, Pudacuo, located in Shangri-La City, Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, has explored the self-supporting model of national parks in poor areas, and now the ecological environment continues to improve, and people's lives have embarked on a happy road of harmonious development.

During the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, there are several times more tourists who come to Pudatso to enjoy the lake and mountains than usual.

"We work in front of our homes, take care of the green mountains and waters, and guide visitors to keep their distance from nature." Yixi, 30, is a staff member of the Pudacuo Tourism Branch of Yunnan Kang Travel Holding Group, responsible for coordinating the sanitation work of Pudacuo.

Born and raised in Yixi Village, Luorong Village is located in the pilot area of the Pudatso National Park system, and 179 people in 36 households in the village are Tibetans. In the past, the villagers of Luorong Village were farmers and herdsmen, loggers, hunters, and horse guides, but now they live and work in their hometowns as "gardeners". "In addition to wages, you can receive 5,000 yuan per capita (RMB, the same below) and 10,000 yuan per household per capita from scenic spots every year."

When Yixi was born, the development of Diqing Prefecture relied on the "wood economy". Like other villages, the village of Luorong cuts wood, hunts, and feeds the mountains. "When I was a child, the villagers relied on the state's relief grain to barely go hungry."

With China's decision in 1998 to ban logging and restrict logging in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, the income of villagers in Luorong Village was affected. Around 2000, tourism in Diqing Prefecture arose, and Pudatso's two scenic spots, Zhidu Lake and Bita Hai, were opened to tourists.

Yeshe's parents and villagers saddled their horses and headed for tourism. "At that time, I was not yet 10 years old, but I was already making money by leading a horse to carry tourists, and I could earn up to 100 yuan a day."

More and more tourists come to Pudatso, and villagers lead horses to carry tourists to play in wetlands, meadows and forests, and some villagers also set up stalls on the grass to sell barbecues, snacks and souvenirs. Tourism, while bringing considerable income to the villagers, destroys meadows, pollutes lakes and infests forests.

Pudatso is located in the core area of the "Three Parallel Rivers" World Natural Heritage Site, which is a national key functional area for biodiversity conservation and water conservation on the Northwest Yunnan Plateau, and an area where the three major biodiversity hotspots in the world are gathered.

In order to curb the deterioration of Pudatso's ecological environment, the livelihood of more than 20 villager groups, including Luorong Village, was taken into account. Since 1996, Pudatso has taken the lead in carrying out national park research in the country, and through 10 years of exploration and practice, pudatso has established the first national park in Chinese mainland in 2007.

After that, the villagers withdrew from barbecue, stalls, horseback riding and other business activities, and the franchised Pudatso Tourism Branch fed the villagers involved in the park according to different standards, exploring a path led by the government and co-invested by the enterprise community to co-manage and share.

In 2016, Pudatso National Park officially entered the list of nine national park system pilots in China. Try to build a relatively complete national park system, explore the self-support model of national park development in poor areas, form an endogenous national park ecological management method that integrates traditional ecological wisdom, and enrich the "hematopoietic" national park community sustainable development mechanism.

Yang Liuyang, deputy general manager of Pudatso Tourism Branch, told reporters that Diqing Prefecture was a deeply impoverished area before poverty alleviation, and under the circumstance that local finances were more difficult and the national financial input mechanism was not perfect, the pilot area of pudatso national park system should achieve large-scale effective protection through a small range of non-expendable use of resources under the premise of strict protection.

Over the years, following the principle of strict protection and appropriate utilization, Pudacuo has embarked on a new path of effective protection and sustainable utilization of natural resources. Yang Liuyang introduced that in terms of people's livelihood, the ecological feeding fund in the past ten years has reached 150 million yuan; in terms of ecology, monitoring shows that the habitats of rare animals and plants such as Zhongdian leaf whiskerfish and black-necked cranes have been restored, the population has grown steadily, the water quality of The Genus Du Lake has been upgraded from Class III to Class II water quality, and the integrity and authenticity of the natural ecosystem of Pudacuo have been fully protected.

Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Zhang Wu Text Editor: Song Yanlin

Source: Author: China News Network